Over winter break that first year the team had a chance to vote on whether they wanted an ineligible player from the first semester, Allec Hasbeen, to join the team for the spring semester. Allec was a former Div. I player at the University of Oregon, played his high school ball in New Orleans, and played on the offensive juggernaut UD team the first semester when Big B. and Big Swan and I had just arrived on the scene. Allec had to apply for an extra year of eligibility which he had lost when going down to an injury when still playing for the Oregon Ducks. The NCAA granted him the extra year but Allec couldn't get his academic standing in line with NCAA regulations for the first semester of my first full year on the team, and when we as a team took the vote nobody knew yet if he was going to be eligible for the second semester. The team vote came back as a majority "no". I had voted "yes" to let him on the team. The fact we were even voting was messed up. It should have been coaches decision. Coach had Allec come in and talk to the team and we had a re-vote. I had encouraged others to vote yes because I thought it would make our team better and that it would have made me better. Allec worked out on his own all year, lifting weights, going through shooting drills, running etc... It was just like I had always done growing up, and I respected him for his commitment and passion for the game. Of course some would argue that if he had that much passion then he should have studied harder so as to be eligible to play. The second team vote came back as a majority "no" again, but it didn't matter anyway because the kid didn't make the grades. I talked to Allec about it one time while in the weight room after the season and told him how I wished he could have played with us and that I voted "yes" to having him on the team both times, and that I tried to persuade others to do the same, but he didn't believe me. I then talked about how I had admired him for his work outs and that I did the same thing and that I almost asked him if he wanted to work out together. By then I may have convinced him that I was sincere in wanting him on the team even though we may have been competing for playing time against each other. He would have been the best player on the team and it would have been great to go up against him every day in practice. I ended our conversation by saying that it was disappointing that he didn't get himself academically eligible and that consequently the whole voting thing didn't even matter. It was a whole lot to do about nothing in the end. My very first semester when Big B. and Big Swan and I would make it to the UD games wearing our turtle necks and gold chains I used to like to watch Allec race down the floor and one hand thunder dunk on the opposition. He could get hot and nail a barrage of three pointers in a flash in the Loyola Marimount high scoring offensive system they were running. Yep, it was a shame I didn't get the chance to play and practice with and against a thoroughbred like Allec Hasbeen.

The first year in review: Basketball wise it was a great learning experience. I honed my game and had a lot of fun playing JV, and even though I blew some wide open inside shots in varsity games, I made some shots too. My first official NCAA points came in a varsity game at home during my freshman year on an assist from Darby Allen. Darby was a guard from Gary Indiana who had a lot of game and also a lot of athleticism. He was fun to watch play and fun to play with. He could jump off the stride or off of two feet and in practice or pick up games he cleanly and legally blocked my shot many times way above the rim. He played a lot at the point, but also got some time at the three position. In the game where I made my first field goal Darby penetrated into the defense coming from the top of the key while I had made a cut and clogged the lane a little, so I popped out and next thing you know Darby through me a pass and without thinking I made a quick side step move and launched a short jumper. Swoosh straight through it went. The crowd erupted. I couldn't feel a thing as I raced back on defense. Darby gave me a shout of encouragement and I thanked him for the pass. I scored on a three pointer later in the game and that was it, ending the game with 5 points. It feels good thinking back about it, and it took me a while to remember it. For years it was readily accessible in my mind, but I guess the waves of time washed it back into the vaults of long ago memories. There was a point in that season that I thought I might break the starting line up. There was a second year player ahead of me at the 4 spot from Morton Illinois, and in practice I was gaining on him fast. I remember coming to practice on some days hung over and or feeling the strain from an evening spent with a lady friend and I would just be throwing down dunks left and right. One of the seniors on the team, a guard from Maquokita Iowa, said to me before a game, "Its your time to shine." I think he liked my warm up routine, but I felt a bit stupid because I wanted to show my stuff in the game and not in warm ups. The team ended the season around the .500 mark, so we won some and we loss some that year. Life in the dorms the first semester was memorable and I only have good feelings when thinking back about the experience. Moving into the Wilson Street crib was an adventure which was only beginning by the end of that school year. I was completing my courses on the way to an Environmental Science degree (I had hoped), but I had to spend more time in the class room than any one else on the team because of the many science labs I was required to take, and the labs were interfering with practice time. This would prove to be costly for my basketball career at UD in the upcoming season. All in all it was one of the most exciting years of my life.

I lost two days of writing trying to publish stories from laptop to the internet. The laptop's mouse pad is to blame. There are a few more good stories about Ike Lambert and Big Stace from the semester I lived in the dorms. The first has to do with an ally-oop dunk Ike threw to me during our team organized pick up game sessions that took place before and after the start of the season. We were playing on the short courts in the upstairs gym at the UD sports complex. Our game was on the court nearest to coaches office. A lot of times the teams were segregated because the black guys would always pick each other. When ever I called the next game I would pick up anybody who asked me to play, but sometimes I picked up all white guys so as to demonstrate that we could whip some ass on the court. Ike was almost always on my team (Big B. was in the IC during this period). I rarely dunked in games after I suffered the ankle injury during the intramural game the first semester I attended UD. Ike threw me a pass in the pick up game from about the free throw line on a transition play and I jumped off the stride and barely caught the pass on the end of my fingertips and proceeded to hammer down the dunk on the fools under me which shook the whole backboard and posts attaching it to the wall. Ike had thrown the pass what looked like a foot or so too high, which he mentioned to me during the ride home. It was a dunk to remember. There is nothing quite like the feeling of making a play like that, which was something I had dreamed about for many years as a kid and it was an ability which I worked very hard to achieve. Nothing else in life has compared to the feeling of dunking a basketball in a game. Now a days about the closest I can come to reliving those feelings is to drink back a few brews, take a couple tokes, and write about it. The plays on the court were like artistic expressions of self in physical movement and in sport, but they only last for the brief moments when they take place and then alls thats left is the memory, the act itself for ever gone like dust in the wind. At least my stories are something that can be read and experienced over and over and by many more people.

Ike and I played the same position at one point during my first full season. He had started at the three spot but coach moved him to the four position, which is where I was playing. Coach told me that I should explain the role of the four spot in the offense to Ike. I did, incorporating many coaching lessons about flashing in the paint and posting up from not only my recent experience but from all I had learned from other coaches at the various colleges I had attended. Ike took my advice and went out on the court that night and had his best game of the season, scoring over 20 points in the game. I was a good coach and I enjoyed teaching others the craft of playing basketball.

If I'm going to talk about my dunks I better talk about the times I got dunked on. One such time I was playing in a game against a high school kid from New Orleans. The kid had connections with someone involved in the UD men's basketball program so he was allowed to participate in our team organized pick up games. On the play the kid stole an inbounds pass using an old school slick trick (which I had used before on others) and then lean in dunked on the inbounder, nuts in face and all that jazz. The problem was that I was the inbounder. Later that same afternoon I was matched up against the kid and I hit a crucial jump hook over him from the free throw elbow (I was a good three feet further away from the hoop than I thought when I had already committed to making the move). Darby was on my team that game and said "Thats how you talk shit back to him!" I didn't understand what he meant at first and replied, "I don't need to talk trash." Darby was like, "That's what I'm saying." Then I got what he meant.

The kid from New Orleans had moved to Dubuque to get away from the hood and the temptation of the street life. When playing against Ike on another occasion he knocked Ike to the ground and from the sidelines I yelled, "Help him up!" The N.O. Kid responded with a slew of swear words and something to the effect of, "I ain't pick'n that mutha up!" Our coach had told us that if we knock a teammate down in practice or in a pick up game to help him up after wards. Soon after the incident coach said that no non-UD students could participate in our pick up sessions. That was not what I had intended. I went to a game of the N.O. kids at Dubuque Senior High School, one of three large high schools in Dubuque. Senior was made of limestone bricks, looked like a prison from the outside, and lay in the heart of the city. I was hoping to see the N.O. baller dunk on some short white Iowa boys, but the kid hardly played, and when he did get in the game he looked nervous and out of place. Even though we had our run ins I was rooting for the kid to do well and I wanted to see him dunk in a real game. I asked some of his partners about what the problem was. I could relate to his situation because I was a streetballer myself learning to adapt to organized ball. I never even played for my high school yet I was playing in college. I passed on some advice that he should keep playing and working to get better if thats what he really wanted to do. Never give up on your dreams, especially with all the natural talent that the young man has. A couple years later I saw him. He was waving a wad of dollar bills around and was sporting gold chains, gold rings, gold capped teeth and diamond earrings. The story was he had gone back to New Orleans and turned to the street life and to making easy money. One last tidbit of information about the kid that I'll never forget. Word got around that someone had cracked on the kid and said he looked just like the dude from "Tales from the Cript." That was an all time great smack running blast from someone who spent time in that old river town. The kid did look a little bony in the face and he did resemble the Tales from the Cript host. Of course the smack talk is all good fun and ingrained in the culture.

Big Stace lived down the hall from Ike, Spike and myself the one semester I lived in the dorms. He was a muscular black kid from Dunbar High School in Chicago. The first time I saw Stace was in the weight room. I thought for sure he was a football player, but his first couple years at UD he just wrestled. His wrestling coach was an old school, and I mean an old school style coach. He used to be the head football coach before the university made him step down for what some say was overworking the team. I really liked that old coach and I was lucky enough to have a chance to take a class that was taught be him ('History of Sport' was the name of the class). Stace and I had talked about starting a push up program where we would agree to do 100 push ups everyday regardless of what other weight lifting we did. I guess Stace thought I had agreed to start because he went ahead and did it for a long while and then was very disappointed when he found out that I hadn't been doing it. I had been lifting free weights every day, and that year I bench pressed the most weight on the basketball team (265 lbs 3X) at our end of season strength testing. I was still dating the teacher who lived in Boscobel when I first moved into the dorms. She came to visit one time and attended the UD Commencement ceremony with me and with Big Stace. I have never seen someone act so polite, charming, and so smooth as I did when I saw Stace around my girl friend. I guess he was impressed with my selection of such a cute tenderoni. Stace and Ike had a general education requirement class together with me that semester and we had to drag our asses out of bed and be to that class at 7:30 AM ! three times a week. The class was called Music Appreciation. Stace was like a walking zombie in the morning. He used to sit next to me in class and copy my notes down word for word. I was curious as to whether he was even contemplating what he was writing so I wrote some "mom jokes" down and he copied them word for word not discovering them until later on when studying for the upcoming test. I made sure he had all the correct notes and apologized and talked to him about his sleepiness problem. I let him look off my test paper during the test even though the teacher stood behind us and out loud said to me during the test, "You don't have to let him look at your paper. " I responded by twisting and hiding my paper and saying "Hey!" like 'Hey, what are you doing looking at my paper.' That provoked a chuckle from Stace and some others nearby. I justified my actions of making my paper available for him to see because I felt guilty about the "mom jokes" and because I knew that he had a morning sleepiness disorder. He and Ike had to study much harder and longer than I did just to get a passing grade. It seemed unfair to me. D Rog and Moe's take on Big Stace was they thought he was a fake. It had to do with them trying to hook up with some she-males one night and toking on a jizzoint and Big Stace fake hitting it when it was passed to him just to try and impress the ladies. My take is, oh well, in some ways Mo and D had their less than on the level qualities and skeletons. Stace had some very good qualities in my opinion, and we all had some bad. One night a few of us were hanging out in Stace and Zeke's room watching a movie. One of the co-eds from across the way came by and said she wanted to talk to me. Her name was Sarai. Next thing you know we were in her room getting down and dirty. At the last moment she asked me to put on a jimmy hat. I didn't have any so I called Stace and Zeke's room and talked to Zeke who said that I could come over and grab one off Stace's dresser. I went and grabbed a couple, but a she-baller named Fanny Bronze was in the room and sniffed that something was amiss, so the cock blocking beee-ithch called Sarai and told her that I had come into Zeke's room bragging about knocking boots etc... It was a flat out lie and Sarai wouldn't even open the door for me afterwards. The full truth came out a couple years later. In fact Fanny had a crush on me and I kind of liked her. She had her 15 seconds of fame when at the beginning of the women's basketball season she was leading women's Division III NCAA basketball in scoring and it was even posted on ESPN. Sarai was known as an "STW bitch". Sarai and her friend Alley Cat were both Environmental Science majors as was I. STW stood for "Save The World". I used to defend the fact that they were Env. Sci. majors but I thought the STW tag was hilarious. We used to say 'STW' like Chuck D in Public Enemies and Professor Griff's song about the 'S1W's'.
Stace moved into the Wilson street crib at the start of the summer. He said I could borrow any of his gear to wear. I guess I got carried away because I wore his gear out. He had a lot of Starter jerseys and some hip gene overalls which G Money (aka Havatake) and I would wear around that summer with only one strap fastened. What a couple of tokens we were. I'm sure Stace was clowning me behind my back about wearing out his clothes. At least I made sure everything was always returned and returned clean and washed. That summer at Wilson Street was crazy, and a lot of it is a blur, but things were only going to get crazier after that.

First NBA game of the season on the CBC this Sunday morning as I finish rewriting my lost work. Toronto Raptors basketball! vs. Bobcats from Char. North Carolina. I hitched south yesterday to Corner Store for beer, came home and watched Hockey Night in Canada, Vancouver Canucks shut out Minnesota Wild, Canuck's goalie Bingo Bango Bongo Roberto Luongo on a record setting tear of keeping the puck out of the net. Its hard to believe that I like watching hockey about as much as basketball now. Hopefully today's NBA game is a good one.

I am trying to write all the Ike Lambert stories down before moving on, and as I am thinking back I am confused at the timetable of things, particularly regarding playing in games against defending Division III National Champions UW Platteville, a team coached at the time by the great Bo Ryan. Our team must have gone on the road to Platteville my first year, because I remember getting in the game and running an inbound play under Platteville's basket. I came around the screen set by Ike and was fed the pass. I pulled up like I was going to shoot but was intending to drop it into Lambert just like old times from the three on three Lancaster tournament. Ike thought I was going to surely shoot it and turned his back on me trying to get rebound position. I had no choice but to launch a shot which hit the side of the back board missing any rim what so ever. I glanced over at coach at the bench as I ran backwards while getting back on defense. Coach glared at me and yelled, 'Matt?" with his hands and shoulders in the question pose. I just nodded and played defense. That story is blurred in my mind and combined with my memory of the game against Platteville the next year. A couple things don't make sense about it. Did we play at Platteville two years in a row? Usually teams alternate playing on each others home court from year to year. During my second Platteville game Big B. had transferred back to UD and he was on the team. That story to be told later.

Lancaster 3 on 3 Tournament

Ike Lambert and I and a friend of Ike's from his hometown of Hazelgreen entered a three on three tournament in the town of Lancaster Wisconsin. I knew the town because I used to drive through it when I was going to school at UW Richland. At the tournament I saw and played against some of my former teammates from UW Richland. We played some tough games against some of the teams that had older physical players. They all knew who Lambert was. A few years prior Ike had led his high school team to the state tournament, made it to the finals, only to loose by one point in overtime. Ike said the whole town followed the team bus to Madison to watch the game and cheer on the team. Ike was a basketball legend in his hometown. I always saw my self as a play maker on the basketball court, at least more so than a scorer, so playing with Ike was easy. Just pass him the ball when he posts up down low and chalk up two points. That's what I did in Lancaster and that simple strategy won us the tournament. All that we got were some t-shirts for our troubles and that was about it (that t-shirt became highly coveted by some of my friends from the ICE and I eventually gave it to my old friend Big A.). After the last game Ike and I were hanging around talking to some of the younger guys that he and I knew (the UW Richland guys) when a dunk session ensued. The adrenalin was flowing after the hard fought victories and Ike and I put on a dunk show. I was two hand reverse dunking, throwing it off the glass and catching it then dunking it two handed, bouncing it off the floor and then catching it and dunking, and bouncing it off the floor then off the glass and catching it and dunking, and I was even doing statue of Liberty 360 dunks. Ike was throwing down some mean jams as well. I'm sure we celebrated the victory and the day mighty hardily later that night. There was and probably still is a great basketball tradition in south west Wisconsin. Ike's church had basketball leagues and tournaments starting for kids in grade school. The church had its own gym where I got to see Ike's little sister play. She was unstoppable. That little gym was packed and had more people in the bleachers at those games then the games at UW Richland. Over Thanksgiving break one year Big B. and an old baller from the ICE who we knew from the Robert A. Lee Rec Center named Larry O'Garry were all invited to Ike's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Larry was playing ball for a rival school near Dubuque called Upper Iowa University and just happened to be visiting when Ike invited us to come. The food was awesome and there was an old tradition in Ike's hometown of the ball players getting together to play on Thanksgiving day. Larry didn't have any basketball shoes with him so I lent him my coveted pair of Blue Air Jordans that Shot had given to me way back in the day. I played like crap that day, and the old ballers from Hazelgreen were unimpressed and whispering under their breath and making sny remarks about the fact that I actually played ball in college. It was easy to see that they were resentful of my college baller status. They fouled me on every play. Ike didn't get the same treatment. O'Garry had his usual good outside shooting game and Big B. did his usual thing. My girl friend from Ike's hometown came by and she too was unimpressed with my performance. Oh well, thats the way it goes sometimes. I still had a great time being with the fellas and having an awesome meal at Ike's with his whole family. I vaguely remember cruising around with the guys in Ike's black Cutluss Supreme later that night while a bit liquered up and some other guys yelling something at us and Big B. quickly rolling down the window and yelling back ,"Hey! Why don't you try to shove your d_ck up your a_s and see if fits!" but he didn't quite finish it before busting out in an evil but contagious uncontrollable laugh. That sticky fingered O'Garry "kept" my shoes. On that trip he had been saying how the only rap song he liked was "Down with OPP" which stood for "Other People's Property" ,or so I've been told. Those blue Jordan's were some sweet shoes and I might still have them to this day had O'Garry not stolen them. That chump! I didn't see O'Garry for years after that but eventually I did run in to him back in the IC (probably at the U of I Field House courts) and confronted him about the shoes. It was water under the bridge by then but I tend to remember things like that and I just wanted to hear what he had to say about it, which was not much.

I started writing this blog on a Wed. but now it is Thursday. Yesterday was the day after the U.S. Presidential election and it was the day I found out who won. It was a historic moment when it became official that Barack Obama, an African American was voted to be the next President of the United States of America. The CBC TV news here in Canada gives lots of air time to U.S. issues so I was able to follow the election relatively closely. During the highly watched Iowa caucuses, the first caucus to take place, Obama's crew apparently played basketball at some point, I assume in Des Moines, Iowa's state capitol. I bet it has been talked about a lot down in the states that Obama played point guard for and led his high school basketball team to a state championship in Hawaii. Later I saw an interview Obama gave and he talked about playing basketball in Iowa and then winning the caucus. In the next state he didn't play and they lost the bid to Hillery Clinton, his Democratic party rival. Obama said because of the outcome in Iowa he and his crew planned to play where ever possible. Since Obama claims Chicago as his home now and a lot of my stories are about kids from Chicago and even trips with teammates through Chicago (not written in this Blog as of yet) and because of the basketball connection and because of the historic importance of the event I thought I may has well enter a little story about it to mark the occasion. My hopes and prayers go out to the new president elect and to the whole nation for a better future for the world.

Bad Back acts up in current life as writer/farmer

Tough day for me today in my current real life situation. I hurt my back leaning over to turn on the TV this morning while trying to check the most recent weather update for the next few days. This blog entry is one where my real life meets my past life. Cross over blogging. A couple months ago a wrote a blog entry called "Story of a Street Blogger from the ICE". It was the blog about the blog. I lost it as I tried to post it online (I type my blogs on my laptop then I have to go outside and over to the landlords house to plug in online where I then attempt to post what I have written or edited). My back pain has to do with basketball in regards to something I mentioned in my first or second blog entry, that is the fact that upon turning 39 this coming January I want to train for a year so that I can hopefully be able to dunk a basketball at the age of 40, which is one of my lifetime goals. I was already in pre-training mode but that has sort of fallen by the wayside with the onslaught of fall wet weather and being so busy on the farm where I live. I did manage many 20 mile long very hilly bike rides to the south end and back during this past summer. Speaking of the bike rides I finally tried Red Bull energy drink, and let me tell you, it is the real deal. It actually gave me lots of energy for the rides home and for work on the farm afterwards. In any case, the back pain I have and the 45 minutes of being virtually paralyzed from the pain this morning has me questioning the reality of achieving my goal of dunking on a ten foot high regulation hoop at the age of 40. It was a bad back that ended my basketball career. But that happened many years after Dubuque. The story is troubling to tell because it rekindles the frustrating and helpless feelings I had concerning my last employer, doctors, lawyers, Workman's Comp. etc... I would have been very happy to stay in the IC working at a job I liked and playing basketball in what I bet is one of the greatest basketball Mecca's in the world (and yeh, there is some home town bias in that comment, but there have been books written by people who have traveled across the U.S. and played at all the famous or relatively well known basketball play grounds, rec centers, and field houses and the U of I Field House in the IC has received the highest ratings possible). I better save those stories because the focus of these blog entries is supposed to be about my University of Dubuque basketball experience.

So where was I last time. Oh yes, first full season, playing on the JV squad but getting some varsity time as well. My memories of that season are a little blurry, especially concerning the second semester once Ike and I moved into the Wilson Street pad. We picked up a couple roommates named JT who was an awesome UD linebacker on the football team, and Scooby, a former UD basketball player. Two black kids from Chi town. Ike wasn't so sure about having the two new roomies. He was from small town Wisconsin after all and there were some cultural differences to be worked through in the new arrangement. Both JT and Scooby and another athletic muscular black kid from Chi. named Big Stace (who at one time or another wrestled, played football, and eventually even basketball - after I transferred - for UD) all avoided playing basketball for the team or in pick up games with or against me because (only a theory of mine) I dunked on all of them at one time or another. JT got two handed rebound dunked on while playing in a full court game on the lower courts in a pick up game one time, and another time someone threw me an ally-oop which I proceeded to two hand dunk on him. Big Stace got similar treatment. Scooby, Spike and I were playing 24 or 21 in the upper gym (where the team practiced and played) and I drove baseline and cup dunked on old Scoob. I think the thought of a white kid from Iowa dunking on them and making them look helpless to do anything about it is what I think they most feared. Spike told me that Scooby said he thought the only two players on the UD team that he thought could play in "The League" as they called the NBA were Ike Lambert and myself. Two white guys? Cool, but in actuality I thought he was nuts. That being said I would have to say that that was one of the greatest basketball compliments I ever got. Ike and I were the same height and ended up playing the same position. JT ended up running up a huge phone bill which he never payed and he and Scoob eventually moved out (maybe I kicked them out, can't remember for sure). At the end of the year Ike found out that his mom got a job for our cross town and inter conference rival, Loras College. He could get free tuition if he decided to transfer, and since his family did not belong to the upper class or financially endowed, Ike did just that. There were no shortages of potential new roommates. Spike wanted to move in during the summer, and so also did Big Stace, and unfortunately so did non other than Mick Glajoe. The basketball season that year ended uneventfully. I can't even remember it. I was drinking heavily at the time. I made a point of drinking every night for a month straight. Kills off internal parasites ya know (or so I always say and hope). Havatake was my main drinking buddy. His dad drank vodka like a Russian, so drinking was in G Money's blood. Finding money to drink wasn't so easy, but it wasn't so hard either. 40 oz. bottles or quarts of beer were only about a buck and a half. I got a little spending money for food and rent from my mom and from my dad (divorced when I was three) and from my grandparents (God bless their souls). I could eat cheap by shopping at a grocery store called Aldi's Save a Lot, cooking for myself, eating deer from the freezer that Big B and I would bag every year during deer hunting season, and by eating with the team and by sneaking into the campus cafeteria. I always had food sent and given to me by all the sets of grandparents and by my mom and dad. I tried to share with other hungry and poor associates and teammates. I earned the nickname of MacGyver (old TV show where a guy made a bomb out of anything available) for creating food when it looked like the cubbards were barren. As part of my financial aid package I was "awarded" work study. The first semester that year I had a job working the desk at the sports facility. I was unable to find the discipline in myself to consistently show up for my shifts. The office I was to work in was in the lower level of the sports complex facing a brick wall. This was a very small school and hardly any body ever came to the desk. We weren't supposed to shoot baskets or anything when we worked (although I usually did and the head man hardly ever complained). With my major as Environmental Science I had more hours in class than any one else on the team (besides flight majors who the coach usually made pick between basketball or flight school) because of all my lab time. I only lived on campus the one semester and did not have a car consistently through my UD tenure so transportation to work (and practice) was also an issue. It seemed every time I was supposed to work there was something else going on. Especially during my Sunday shift at the work study gig. I could not discipline myself to study during the three hour shifts. The tiny equipment check out room was like a prison, very depressing, very dreary. And being on a college basketball team is like having a full time job. We did fund raisers and had other functions through out the year. There was weight lifting, practice, and game travel. And I had to play and dress for two games every time (JV and Varsity), with a women's game in between half the time. Yet others on the team did it all, worked a job and played on the team. Or at least one other person did it. Ike Lambert had a job working at a local bank where he counted the change every night. He would have a full day and then at the time of night when I was about ready to settle in he would say that he had to go to work. That was a good time for me to study when we lived in the dorms. Ike would always come back with McDonalds and he always offered me a burger and fries. What a good friend, no doubt about it. Ike had to study a lot harder than I did just to pass his classes. Ike had discipline. Probably from his dad making him do chores on the farm every day. We went to his house on several weekends and I always wanted to help him with the chores and he wouldn't even let me. Big B once said that Ike got his strength on the basketball court by wrestling all those cows around and throwing those bales of hay around. Spike also worked at the same work study job I did and he used to remind me about my shifts coming up and give me a hard time when I skipped out and when I eventually got fired. The head of the sports facility who was also my boss was a really great guy, a good boss, and he gave me so many chances after I had skipped work so many times. He always told me how I was a really good referee in intermurals. I had to ref one of D Rog and Moe's intermural games when I was playing for the UD team and they were coaching. I knew the game of basketball and the rules and I always tried to do a fair job when refereeing. My boss even went so far as to tell the basketball coach about my potential. Reffing is a hard gig and who wants to get yelled at all the time and for only like 5$ something an hour? When the final call came from the boss about me being fired and all I told him how I thought he was such a nice boss and such a swell guy, and I meant it. He tried to give me the job back but I told him I didn't think I could do it, that it would be much more of the same thing, not showing up or leaving early and still writing down my full time (or having someeone else like Spike punch me out). Spike tried to cover for me so many times. It seemed that the poorer kids on the team had it made. Their school was payed for a lot of the time. At UW Richland my two pals were getting payed to go to school. I was going deep into financial debt due to the student loans. Not taking advantage of work study and by spending money on booze and taking out more student loans and financially taxing my entire family has always been instrumental factors in shaping my life experience, from the time spent at UD and after. For the record, my life time experience in the business world of making money and working a job does not necessarily follow the blue print of how the work study experience went. I have worked jobs where I was a dependable long time loyal employee. I guess I just didn't have enough free time to my self during the semester of work study. I tried to get other jobs while in Dubuque, and I got them and the people were instantly impressed with my skills and abilities but all the jobs were so depressing I couldn't keep my sanity working them so I eventually quit them all soon after starting. Now that I am writing and thinking back about my UD days I am realizing how I compared to others in regards to how I was seen as a person, not just as a basketball player. I could have done so much more and done so much better, in basketball, in paying for my schooling at the time, in studying and learning more, and in being a more responsible human being and a better friend. I guess thats what I am doing in a way by writing these blogs, by telling my story, and working through the memories of my failures and of my successes regarding the game I once loved and the life I lived while playing it.

The following summer was one of the best I ever lived. Basketball, making money doing something I enjoyed (working basketball camp), parties at the Wilson Street Pad, the women, it was the best Dubuque summer ever in any case. Spike and Stace moved in and over the summer Spike and I shot a lot of hoops at a few different parks we found. One was a little park located on a dead end street that came to a point atop the limestone cliffs that overlooked the city and the Mississippi River Valley. The court had a nice hoop but the pavement was small. I liked that and I told the fellas that I thought the small court really forced us to develop our inside game. The other court was down on the low end, located somewhere in the middle of the long narrow seemingly endless downtown. It had a nice hoop as well, maybe just shy of 10' (I loved playing on rims that were just a little short of ten feet) and it had a full court sized blacktop, but there was only one hoop. Spike and I found a game of 21 there onetime with like 12 other brothers playing. A cat that used to hoop for the UD JV squad (during the very first semester Big B, Swan and I showed up on the scene) named Main (brother of Square, another former UD player) and Scooby were there in the mix that day, and maybe even the aspiring rap artist "Emerge", who tried out for the UD team at the beginning of the previous year. Basketball wise the whole set up was perfect for me. I may have been the only white guy there, but maybe not. This was street ball at its purest form. No out of bounds and no fouls, unless crazy obvious and over the top. This is the game I grew up playing. Tip ins were a key factor in this type of game, and I loved to basket hang and tip players out of the game, something I had mastered over all the years of playing 24 at Longfellow Elementary and Dodge Street Park (aka Oak Grove) back in the ICE. In the martial art of Kung Fu I've heard it said that it can be more easy to fight multiple opponents at one time than fighting a single opponent. Its the same when playing a game like 21 or 24, where no one person really commits or can commit to playing match up one on one defense. Even if one person tries to match up they usually get screened out or picked by other players on the court who are taking up space. There's always a group of players huddled around the rim and in the paint waiting for a rebound. A few quick players who feel they got a chance at stealing the ball on a dribble often times take turns guarding or double teaming players from the outside. There was a lot of cats on the court that day. I had the mojo flowing, that feeling like the basketball spirit had a hold of me. In the game I soon started raking in rebounds, put backs, tips, and wins. I had my favorite spots to stand, right on the side and underneath where I could grab any soft shots that rolled off, any air balls that I could put back before any one knew what happened, and any near misses that just nicked the rim that may have just as well have been air balls. After checking the rock up top and hitting a few deep shots, and I mean deep long range jumpers, I drew several defenders almost every time I got the ball. Sometimes I would use old tricks to catch people off guard for a quick and easy two. And then there were the two times that I broke through the initial wave of defenders by a spin dribble or high dribble and cut through the lane and tried to jump over and dunk on like seven dudes. On the two occasions I tried this I hammered the ball of the back of the iron, shook the whole back board, post, park and the whole Low End with the power of my thrust, and nearly broke the steel rim off the pole. A still frame photo of those two plays must have looked like the old Michael Jordan poster that came in the Wheaties boxes where J. (one of many nicknames for Jordan) is shown jumping over about ten kids on his way to the hoop at a court that had colorful graffiti painted on the wall in the background. After one of the dunk attempts I made a comment in response to someone else's remark like, "I should have dunked it backwards on all of ya." That wasn't well received, but from my perspective I was just telling them what I really thought, and so "matter of factly" as my good friend Kemp once told me. Now, some 20 years later while writing this, maybe I was a bit too bravado in my confidence and attitude. I wasn't known as a trash talker, but some people took my "matter of fact" style of responding or remarking as trash talking. And people probably still do to this day. I'm always just being honest. But I do know and see how people take my confident know it all style and the whole thing tickles me, especially the fact that I can, or could, always back it up or at least gain their respect trying. Surprisingly the city of Dubuque took down the hoop at that downtown park. I bet they saw it being used so much (you know, by all the gang banging and drug dealing black guys from Chicago, oh yeh and by those basketball players too) that they decided to tear it down. That was a sad moment when I heard that news. That was a real nice court and hoop in a real nice park in a nice folksy downtown neighborhood.

I lifted a lot of weights with Spike and Big Stace that summer. We would head up to the UD sports complex and down into the weight room where there were free weight stations to get in a great work out. Basketball camp started sometime in July and lasted three or four weeks. We got free room and board and were payed 200$ a week. An Iowa high school player by the name of Rafe Lafrentz was at the camp that year. He went on to play at the University of Kansas and even the NBA. Coach had several local area coaches come to the camp to help out, and some were older guys from the IC that I knew and had grown up watching and playing against. Like every summer I traveled back to the IC now and then just to get away or to go and party with old friends in the bigger college town that had the better night life. Kids from the team would occasionally come back with me over the weekends. I was looking forward to the next season, especially because the team was planning to travel to Mexico over winter break. That news was enough for Big B to reconsider his plans and he decided that he had better not miss such an opportunity, so he decided to transfer back to UD at the start of the next school year.

The Greyhound Track

Somehow Brag Havatake, a local kid from Dubuque Hempstead High School, and a kid from the Milwalkee suburb of Kenosha named Easy Edge Faster (a running back on UD's lowly football team), and myself , all started hanging out together and together we all started going to the dog track. I came out ahead every time I went. I could take ten bucks, pay for hot dogs and pop, and leave with 20 bucks. It was easy money. I would just read the program, check out the times from the dogs in their previous races, and make my wager, usually "boxing" dogs together for tri-fectas etc... Easy Edge and Havatake were mystified at my success, and they started betting my bets. We were winning all the time. I didn't understand how they couldn't read the program and predict the winners, it all stood out clear as day for me. It was all good until I went to the track with a kid named Rundy during the summer while working the UD basketball camp when I realized I had been reading the programs upside down. I never won again after that. I tried to use my old system but after realizing my mistake things never stood out clearly like they had before. That summer Havatake and Edge and I tried pulling off a caper that got out of control. It involved a credit card and a sports wear store. It was all going good until Havatake started pulling leather 8-ball jackets off the rack. Edge claimed to be a four corner hustler, which was a street gang from the Milwalkee area. He was known for telling long tales, and he did have a lot of hard to believe stories, too many actually. After our failed caper Havatake and I didn't hang with Edge to often. It wasn't anything personal. He graduated and moved on and I forgot about him for the most part.
Around that same period Havatake and I started hanging out with these two chicks that played on the women's UD basketball team. They lived practically across the street from the campus with a roommate from Chi. that Spike used to mess with. There were many a barbeque and afternoon drinking sessions with those girls, and there were some very interesting things that happened between those girls and us. I better not go into details, at least not in this version of the story, but I will say Havatake and I were accused by Darby from Gary Indiana of having some type of two man game, working the ladies in tandem, kicking babes to each other after we had our fill. We did have something going but it wasn't like we ever discussed strategy or anything. When I think back and try to remember all the girls that Havatake and I probably shared, I come up with at least five, and in some cases the girls dated and then dumped one of us for the other one, so we were getting played as much as we were playing. The stories of these women and of other encounters are interesting to say the least, but I better save it for another time or maybe I should just keep it all to myself. If I did tell these tales it would be for the purpose of sharing wisdom. I'm not bragging about the women, in fact I am somewhat ashamed of my youthful stupidity, but I want to tell the story as it actually was. Girls were a big part of the attraction for me to being a basketball player at the college level. I funneled my frustrations involving women (or usually the lack of) into basketball. That started as far back as grade school for me and grew more and more through high school. During good or bad times the thoughts of women would fuel a fire inside me that made me want to create an artistic like moment in time, an expression of self, of my pain, of my happiness, in movement and in sport. Most of those times were by myself late at night in a park or at a school somewhere shooting baskets or putting on a dunk show for the crickets, bats and the stars in the sky. I couldn't muster energy from thoughts about women when I was playing in a real college game though. I was always too concerned about the game and how I would perform, so basketball was also a big escape for me, a place where I could forget about everything else in the world, women, school, money, war, death etc...
Havatake was a hell of a ball player. He was a great long range shooter and a big time high flier. In one JV game he drove baseline as I screened off a couple defenders and jumping off one foot he dunked it, head rim high, arm extended straight out. It was a sweet dunk. I saw the bottom of his shoe as I held back the two defenders. That was a game in Cedar Rapids against Mt. Mercy. My mom and two of my little bros. were at that game. I scored about 32 points, Havatake had about 40 or 50. I actually had more field goals that game, as was usually the case, but Havatake shot and made a lot of three pointers, sometimes pulling up from 25 feet or so. I always thought Havatake had more hops than myself, and he could jump off the stride or off of two feet, but he didn't dunk with the same power or authority (or reckless abandon) like I did. He scoffed at that criticism. I gained my dunking style from growing up and playing on the streets of the ICE, always against older kids, where if you went to the rack you had to go hard. I had blood blisters, calasses, and scars on my fingers and wrists during the summers of my high school youth from playing jam ball at the many outdoor courts in the city.
Many of my team mates at UD were from the inner city, as I have mentioned many times. A lot of them were brought up with gangs as part of life. Some of my teammates were gang members. Our coach instructed us to treat each other as though we were family, which trumped any rival gang affiliations (supposedly). Havatake and I started our own "club", with our own hand shakes and symbolic gestures. We called each other "G" or "G Money" all the time. Our dominate symbolic gesture and the start of our secret handshake was to hold our right hand up with three fingers up, and the other hand on our elbow. My favorite number was always the number three but I think Havatake liked it because he was a master three point shooter. I could hit threes too but I usually scored three the hard way by taking it to the hoop, getting fouled, and sinking one at the free throw line.
At the start of the second semester our JV squad picked up a kid from Parkville, a 6'5" transfer from UNI (University of Northern Iowa) named Mark Black. He helped our team but he was a bit soft for his big size. He only lasted that one semester and he and Period Baby ended up transferring to Iowa (to the big university in my hometown) and played on the Iowa practice squad (aka the gray squad). I ran into those guys and played with and against them in the IC a hundred times or more (stories told elsewhere).

Mike Singletary. New head coach for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. I just heard a story on sports radio about Big Mike dropping his pants in front of his team during halftime of his first game as head coach. He also benched the starting QB, kicked a player off the field in the middle of the game, had a classic post game rant and apology during the post game press conference and as the radio broadcaster stated, he did all of that in his first game. What's he got left? Reminds me of Magic Johnson's first game as a player in the NBA and the advice and reaction of his teammate Kareem Abdul Jabar afterwards, "We got 81 more games to go young man, you better save some of that energy and emotion or you'll burn out" (not an exact quote by any means). Magic never lost his passion and the excitement he brought to the game of basketball. He did not make it as an NBA head coach. This brings up the question of whether or not great players can make great coaches. Larry Bird did pretty good in the NBA. Wayne Gretzky hasn't had much winning success in his NHL head coaching experience. Mike Singletary. A great dominant defensive player for the 85 Chicahgo Bears. Those eyes (NFL fans know exactly what I mean). Has there ever been a more intense player? I'm calling it right here. This could be the beginning of an NFL head coaching legend. In his presser he stated that he was from the "Old school," and that he would rather play with ten guys and get penalized the whole way then to play with a teammate who was all about himself and not playing for the team. I'm feeling ya' Big Mike. After my UD playing days and during my life as a part time student and University employee working for the U of I department of parking and transportation I developed the nickname, "Old School Matt" or sometimes just "Old Matt" (long stories about the nicknames evolution and Jess Settles, a Hawkeye baller at that time, who had the nickname of "Old Man"). I always liked old school hip hop, and still do, so the nick name fit. Mainly the name came about because I was an older college student still playing ball in intramurals and so forth mainly with and against a lot of younger players. And also because I had played for a few colleges and had stretched my career out for an unusually long time and accumulated a lot of basketball wisdom along the way. "Old School Matt!" So a shout out to the old school and to Mike Singletary. I have always disliked the San Francisco 49's, always. Until now. Good luck Mike!

My last story was about my one on one match versus Mick Glajoe at the"The Cage". I'll try to fill in some of the space in the story between those days and the first semester at UD. Like I mentioned previously, half way through that first semester Big B moved into the dorms and Big Swan and I moved into a pad above a bar called Murph's South End Tap. It was a rundown neighborhood pub located down on "the low end" right along the banks of the old Mississippi. One quick side story about renting the apartments we lived in from the rental agency. With Swan not having a job and us being evicted from the duplex on the hill, I had to pull a slick maneuver on the lady at the rental office. I gave her a friends phone number and a fake name and said it was the number to the RA at the dorms. I waited for the phone call and gave myself a great reference. I passed that trick on to some others and they used it on the same lady. From Murph's tap it was one hell of a long walk to class every day, the only good part about it was the uniqueness of the city being built on limestone cliffs that over looked the river valley. Dubuque has a really old feeling about it, with lots of brick houses and old limestone cliff side landscaping. Big Swan eventually landed a job at Wendy's where he made a few friends. One of those new friends was a kid named Mick Glajoe, who I actually shot baskets with once while still living above Murph's on the high hoop located at the grade school just up the street. For many years Big B and Shot and I would drive through Dubuque on our way to Wisconsin on fishing and hunting trips and I would see that grade school and wonder what it would be like to live in this old town and in that particular neighborhood. Careful what you wish for. The night life in Dubuque was unique, very, very different from that of the ICE. College kids were resented by much of the working class folks in Dubuque, and there was also a high degree of racism in the city. There were a few college bars located on a one block stretch on the main road between our pad and UD. There was also a chicken joint there where I always stopped to buy a plate of French fries on my way home from school (when I had any money). The most popular bar was called Gomer's. That first semester with Big B and Big Swan we hit up Gomer's a few times on the busy Friday nights. The place was packed with a line out the door sometimes. If there were any hotties to be found in Dubuque, Gomer's on a Friday night was the spot. On one of our first Gomer's experiences Big B and Swan and I were in the bar on a Friday night checking out the scene when a tough looking black kid with thick glasses and a backwards ball cap came up to us and asked each of us to take his lighter and put the flame to his hand. None of us bit on this crazy proposal. Later that night I saw the crazy masochist take his coke bottle glasses off and head out onto the dance floor, where chaos then ensued. Bodies started flying everywhere and that pretty much ended the evening for everyone. The bar was cleared, cops showed up etc... It's weird how bar fights are so unnerving and unsettling yet so fascinating all at the same time. I later heard some stories about who that bar brawling lighter toting kid was and its a good thing we avoided any confrontation with him. There is another famous Gomer's story, the most famous and infamous to me, and I wasn't even there to witness it, so what I write is only based on what I remember from hearing from other people. It seemed like crazy stuff always happened when ever I wasn't around. This was one of those instances. I was off visiting a girlfriend. Big Swan and I were still living at the Murph's South End Tap pad. Big B, Ike Lambert, and another new friend of Big B's (a UD baseball player) hit the night life and went to Gomer's on yet another Friday night, where they proceeded to drink some serious quantities of liquor. But before hitting the bar they did some pre-drinking in the dorms. There was a UD football player from Florida who always wore shorts, even in the winter. He also sported a mohawk hair style. He mixed up a huge deadly secret batch of a combination of hard liquor and dared Swan to drink it. Big mistake by a big man. At Gomer's there was a popular concoction served in a shot glass which Big Swan also hit up. The story goes that the 350 pound brother (Big Swan) was stumbling around in Gomer's knocking tables and people over as he stammered about. Eventually he was kicked out. According to Big B and Ike he was just gone all of a sudden. He wasn't spotted again until closing when he was seen outside in the crowd being held up by a group of hot young women. The story follows that he was apparently found lying along the road at the park near bye by these hot babes who took pity on him and helped him back to Gomer's to find his "friends." Ike and Big B had a serious grimace on their faces every time they told the story of how they later that night had to carry Big Swan up the wooden stairs behind Murph's up to our apartment. Swan was sick for a week after that, and that part of the story I did witness. If I would have been there I would never have abandoned Big Swan in such a condition after being kicked out of Gomer's. At the end of the summer Big Swan eventually found a new pad and a new room mate he met at Wendy's, and I moved into the dorms at the start of the next semester.

My freshman year at UD I played mostly on the JV squad. The head coach modeled his program somewhat after the Iowa Hawkeye Basketball program (the big U. in Iowa located in Iowa City which is my home town) by having a practice squad to play and practice against the varsity. Nearly all the schools in the Iowa Conference had JV teams. Most of the players on our JV squad got to see action that year at the varsity level and most of us dressed for all the varsity games. That first year the coach was using a style of play called the Loyola Maramount system. It was a high paced run and gun three point shooting offense that used a lot of players. The previous year the UD squad had all the talent in the world, but Big Mo, D Rog, Rue, Rye Hubb, Square, Trellis, and others all graduated. There was a talented returning sophomore class with players like Zeke, Ike Lambert, Darby and Brute Mahone. The freshman class too was talented. Big Mo and D Rog were coaching our JV team and we started the season with seven straight wins. We kicked the crap out of the varsity in practice on a daily basis. The first semester I shacked up in a coed dorm with two dorm mates: Ike Lambert from Hazel Green Wisconsin, and Spike from south side Chicago. These were two of the most honest and sincere guys I ever met, and it was my only semester of dorm life in all my 13 years of college. One particular incident in our dorm room sticks out as a great memory that allowed Ike and Spike and myself to bond and become closer friends. We were all settling in for the night with the lights off and in bed, or so I thought. I had to turn a light on momentarily, on and off real quick, and in that brief moment that the room was illuminated I glanced over and saw Spike on his knees at his bed saying prayers. There was a brief moment of awkward silence and then I said, "And what's he doing?" Then we all started dying laughing, not because praying was funny but because of the awkwardness of the situation. I respected Spike a lot before and after that. After the giggles left us that night we all had the "Do you believe in God" conversation.
I had a girl friend I met working at Bonanza steak house in a suburb of the ICE that then lived in the small Wisconsin town of Boscobel, located 60 minutes from Dubuque. She was the reason I had moved to the area. Before UD I had attended a junior college in Richland Center Wisconsin, just 30 minutes from Boscobel. The girlfriend was three years older than me and she had got a job as a grade school teacher in the wild turkey capitol of the world known as Boscobel. I had decided to move with her when she got the job. It was a chance for me to continue my dream of playing college ball. South West Wisconsin was so beautiful and I loved to explore and drive around in my 4 wheel drive Toyota pick up (with the awesome custom stereo system.) There are many basketball and life changing stories from the semester I spent at Richland Center, including the fact that I flipped and rolled my truck traveling between the ICE and Richland Center after a weekend of deer hunting. That particular story is called "The Curse of the Big Buck" and it tells how I barely escaped the crash alive, opening the driver side door of the truck while it lay on its side as flames burned under me and down the ice covered road from gasoline that was spilling out after the crash. I met two ballers who became friends while at UW Richland, one from inner city Milwalkee and the other from Battle Creek Michigan. I visited UD on a recruiting visit with the kid from Milwalkee when we were both thinking about transfering, and that was how I ended up at UD. Anyway, while I was living in the dorms that first full year at UD I was still dating the girl in Boscobel. Our relationship was being strained by the long distance status of the relationship. And I was still young and experiencing college life while she was starting her career. Other females in Dubuque were becoming tempting temptresses. The two ballers from UW Richland were both black kids living hip hop and basketball lives. Players they were. Having more than one girlfriend (or a wife with "mistresses") was a way of life for them, and admittingly I was somewhat influenced by the culture. So part of this culture was having many girlfriends, and at the time I thought it was super cool. I bring up Boscobel and the girlfriend because our JV team went to play at Richland Center, our eighth game of the season, JV only, no varsity on the trip because UW Richland was a junior college. The game became our first loss of the season. But before that trip occurred Ike Lambert wanted to move off campus into an apartment during winter break that year. So we got a place down the main road from UD, very near to the old duplex that Big B and Big Swan and I first lived in the year before. This new pad was called the Wilson Street Crib. I was taking care of a Doberman Pincher that I was part owner of when I first moved to Wilson street. The dogs name was Duke and he was a great dog. Eventually I had to take him back to the ICE because it became to hard to take care of him while playing on the basketball team. The game against my former school, UW Richland, came during winter break. Ike and I were already moved into the new pad. There was a road game for Varsity on the Friday night before the showdown at Richland Center. The JV team traveled and dressed for the Friday night game, and some of us even played in it and got substantial playing time. We won the varsity game Friday night, came back to Dubuque and partied hard and long into the morning. I had a new girl friend that I had met through Ike. We spent that night together and needless to say I got hardly any sleep and I was very dehydrated the next morning. The JV players only had to make it to the van early that Saturday morning for the road trip into Wisconsin. D Rog and Big Mo drove us with me giving directions. It was a nastalgic journey for me returning to old stomping grounds with a new team. The only problem was that all the guys on the team were looking like a bunch of zombies. That road trip, without the head coach present, started the trash talking and ribbing sessions that highlighted the long van rides to games that took place in and out of our conference. I think this was the trip where one of the players on the team, a red headed kid from small town Iowa was dubbed "Period Baby" by D-Rog. I really got a kick out of that and I had been waiting for my chance for some ribbing sessions with the likes of D-Rog and Mo. Most of the guys on the team weren't hip to it all, but I cherish those memories, and I loved the comradeship that existed on the teams that I traveled with and played with and the experiences with teammates that I lived with. I had a chance to ask D Rog and Big Mo about how best to recover from a long night of sexual healing. D Rog said he was once told that the best thing to do was drink lots of water. Our team was put to the test at the game that day. In short, we laid an egg. It seemed like nobody was even trying. Bye bye undefeated JV season. My old girl friend from Boscobel was in the stands watching that day. My old coach was on the other sidelines. I didn't stay at UW Richland after my first semester there because there was not enough basketball for me. I needed and liked to play everyday or whenever the spirit moved me. The IC was an oasis of basketball and games could be found at any time on almost every day of the year. Dubuque was a much larger city then Richland Center and with four colleges it offered more opportunities to find a basketball game then the small Wisconsin town. The guys on the UW Richland team complained about having to play once a week. I was also an out of state student at UW Richland and I couldn't afford tuition so when I was there I was only taking one class while trying to gain Wisconsin residency. I did get to practice with the team. My flatmate Ike Lambert had been recruited by the UW Richland coach and told me a story of how the previous year when he was on the UD JV team that the UW Richland coach said after the game during the traditional team handshakes, "You could have been playing 30 games a year Lamb!" This year that old coach had only one decent player who actually dunked on us in the game. At half time of our game after receiving a thrashing I came into the locker room and said loudly, "I quit!" I was actually just making a point and making fun of the rest of the team. In reality it seemed like they quit! But D Rog and Mo never let me live that remark down. "I quit, I quit!" D Rog used to say. He didn't get it. Even Period baby came up to me in the locker room and said, "Are you really quitting?" No one got it. I was the only one who didn't quit. I led the team in scoring, rebounding, steals, and probably in blocks and assists that day. I played my dehydrated hung over ass off. My efforts didn't matter. Period Baby was the first one to get serious playing time on the varsity and got his big break in the previous nights game, so this JV business was probably small time now for him. Havatake played like the Invisible man. He was invisible on the court and in the stat book. Usually he put up about fitty a game, no bull. Reecy "Dragon breath" Vankinscoff, usually a rebounding machine, was coming off a serious ankle sprain, so he didn't contribute much. In the game he looked like his bad foot was bolted to the court. The mad Russian Cray Murphy, starting point guard, chipped in a couple baskets but thats about it. It was a humiliating loss. The UW coach didn't have much to say to me during the post game hand shake. The old girl friend from Boscobel left as soon as the game ended and I didn't even get a chance to speak to her. She later on the phone said she thought I played well. I actually had an open fast break opportunity for a dunk near the end of the game but I had no legs that day (long night with the new girl friend). I did finger roll the rock and made the open shot, and Havatake afterwards was like, "Why didn't you dunk it?" After this game the starting JV players from the start of the season were starting to be plucked off the JV roster one by one for sole action at the varsity level. Injuries and bad play by the upperclassmen caused the JV break up. I eventually even got my chance on varsity that year.

The Cage

The rest of the Dubuque stories are not going to be told in chronological order necessarily. I'm just going to tell them as they come to me. "The cage" was a fenced in blacktop playground with two full court basketball courts located at an old downtown Dubuque church. The church was built in the northern section of the city in what we called the "low end", a vast downtown located on the flats below the limestone cliffs of Dubuque and the Mississippi River valley. To really set the stage and describe the whole ambiance of The Cage and of the city some descriptions of the lay out and the history of the city has to be told. Dubuque is an old city built on and around the many underground mines that exist throughout the local region. A geology teacher I had at UD said there were miles and miles of mine shafts and tunnels through out the city. The architecture of the buildings was Victorian style mostly,with lots of brick and limestone, and with houses and neighborhoods built on every cliff and on every nook and cranny imaginable. The downtown was huge compared to that of the ICE. Dubuque's downtown stretched north a couple of miles with numerous mini small business districts and neighborhoods. Most of the residential districts were built up on the cliff tops. All the brick buildings and churches reminded me of Chicago. In the 1960's the population of the D was near 90,000 persons. In the 1990's the population was a mere 60,000. A huge portion of the storefronts on the low end were boarded up. The downtown was like a ghost town, thanks in most part to recessions that hit the Mississippi River towns in Iowa during the 1980's. The film "Take This Job and Shove It" was filmed at the Dubuque Star brewery. There seemed to be a bar on every block in the city. I loved to play basketball anywhere and everywhere and like I used to do in the IC I traveled around Dubuque looking for courts to play and dunk on. The Cage and its surroundings looked like it came straight out of a huge inner city.
The antagonist of this story is none other than a kid named Mick Glajoe (pronounced French style according to Mick). Big Swan befriended Mick, and Glajoe actually became a roommate of mine at the crazy ass Wilson Street pad during the summer before my sophomore year at UD. Mick loved to talk a big game, and one night while hanging around the house he started talking smack about how he could whip me on the basketball court. I couldn't even take him seriously, but he kept talking junk. I was like, "Look Mick, you better pipe down because your making a fool of yourself." Some of our roommies like Big Stace added fuel to the fire by provoking us to make a wager. It was late and dark when the smack started flowing but it was probably late summer time or early autumn so it wasn't cold outdoors. Mick put up a new pair of Nike's for the wager(he worked at an old Dubuque shoe store called Kunert's) and I put up? I can't remember what. So we all climbed into a few cars, about eight dudes or so, maybe a few honeys came too, and headed to The Cage. Once there the cars parked facing the best hoop (flattest surface and straightest rim) with all the headlights left on in order to illuminate the ass kicking that was about to transpire. The game was not close. I knew I could beet him with one hand tied behind my back. The final score was like 10 to 1 or something. It was a bit nippy out but I think I even managed to throw a weak dunk down on him. He never payed up on the bet. I didn't give a damn about the game, but the whole memory of playing in the cage at night with the car headlights shining and a whole bunch of cats that were from Chicago and other places where basketball was viewed as an ancient art that was deeply woven into the culture of the inner city youth and especially black America, watching and rapping and jiving while the game was going on, is what I appreciate most about the memory of the experience. Mick Glajoe is in a few other of the Dubuque memories and stories that float around in my head, but some of the best Glajoe tales are not directly basketball related.

Asbury Park

This was the main outdoor spot for pick up games during the summers in Dubuque. Asbury was a suburb located to the north of Dubuque, and it had a nice park with a swimming pool and tennis courts and one really nice outdoor basketball court. The court had a smooth synthetic tennis court like surface and the rims were a couple inches low. Lots of memories playing at Asbury. Havatake said his favorite dunk of mine was when he threw me an ally oop from half court and I two handed dunked it on a kid (my nutts in his face) that used to date one of Havatake's old girlfriends. One time Big B and I came up to UD from the ICE in the summer and drank some 40 oz's and then went to Asbury to hoop it up. That day I decided to wear some old kicks I bought in Chicago's Jew town years earlier. They were old and beat up but I wore them for memories sake and for good luck. The kicks were made by a company called "Jump". The crowd at Asbury were dogging my Jump shoes on the sidelines. I recall Darby laughing and pointing when I made a stutter step cut and scraped my Jumps on the surface as I crossed up my defender on the way to the higher far hoop for two. I know one thing about that day. I got more rebounds than anyone. Big Mo and D Rog were there and I remember after the game hanging out, chiefing a blizzunt and getting their confirmation on my rebound prowness, but even they were miffed at my decision to sport the Jumps. I loved the fact that everyone was clowning me, and I had to explain to Big B about the many levels of "the game" and the mojo power of using or wearing an old item that has certain sentimental nastalgic value. The power of this story more than makes up for any negative affects I suffered from the experience of having people dog my shoes. Wearing those old Jumps was pure me, and it seems few others in my life ever understood my way of thinking when it came to things like this. Mick Glajoe was at Asbury the day I wore my old Jump sneaks from Jew town, and maybe after hearing the remarks on the sidelines about the old paint covered low tops I was wearing he got the idea in his head that I sucked at basketball. Big mistake on his part and the whole story of the Cage match against Glajoe reveals the hustle in the game, or maybe it goes even so far as to reveal the hustler inside of me.